Then his troubles began to increase. Phoning him I learned how he was threatened by the VAT authorities because of his failure to send in his forms or how a builder had gone off on a second job in the middle of fixing the library roof, how rain was drenching his books. I’d go over and do what I could but eventually I’d have to return home. I felt horribly guilty, recalling my promise to Chick. Not that I failed to remind Rex of what Chick had mentioned, but I couldn’t be there the whole time. Often he seemed to resent our help. I suppose the boxed wine he bought by mail order didn’t help. He ate a lot, but badly for a diabetic, and for all the various domestic disasters, which his friends coped with pretty well among us, things appeared to improve with time. If anything his grasp on reality seemed to strengthen. He broke down less and began going to a few parties and conferences. He made his peace with the friends he’d insulted and was mostly forgiven. Optimistically, we spoke of him as becoming his old self again. He was introspective in a positive way.
When another August came round he seemed pretty positive. He might start off feeling miserable but conversation soon cheered him up. We’d share a piece of gossip or make fun of a good friend. That was how we were. He joked about Chick, too. I saw that as another sign of healing. Lucinda could always tell who was on the phone because of the laughter. I spoke to him on the first Monday in September. He was drunk, but no more than usual. He’d sent me an e-mail, he said. This was unusual. He hated e-mail as a rule. So I went to my PC and there it was. Rex rarely offered that amount of self-revelation and this had the feel of a continuing conversation, maybe with himself. It knocked me back a bit. So much that I made plans to see him the following weekend. It was as short as it was shocking:
“The story I never wrote was the story of my life, my unhappiness at failing to convince my father of my worth. I tried so hard, but I never had the courage or the method to tell that story. I wrote to impress. The verses always had to be witty, the prose clever. You remember me telling you, when we were young, how scared I was about dropping my guard. Truth wasn’t as important as success to me. I needed to impress the people my dad approved of. Nobody else’s opinion meant much. Either he saw me in the Saturday Evening Post or I simply didn’t exist as a writer.” I think he’d planned to say more, but that’s all there was.
On the Thursday, Jimmy Cornish called and told me Rex was dead. The rest was in the obits. Gone but not forgiven.
I had failed to keep my word to Chick. I hadn’t found the bullets. I should have spoken to his accountant. I should have helped him back to AA. I’ve never understood booze. People have to be rolling in the gutter singing “Nellie Dean” before I get the picture. I missed all the signs and fell down on a solemn promise. Not for the first time. I never gave a promise to a child I couldn’t keep, but I made a habit of breaking them to adults. Rex knew exactly what he was doing. I’m not the only survivor still running scenarios through their head. If I’d found the gun and stolen it…If I’d checked to see how much he was drinking…If I’d listened more closely…
Rex wrote some great ghost stories. When it came to haunting his friends, he was a bloody expert. What he’d done to Jenny told me he knew exactly what he was up to. People say all ghost stories are optimistic because they show a belief in life after death. Equally, all artists are optimists because the act of creation is optimistic in itself. Rex’s poems and openings are still on our machine. Lu won’t erase them. On a bad night I’ll pour myself a glass of wine and press the button until I hear his voice. I’ll listen to his gentle mockery as he invents an outrageous tale about my getting my toe stuck in the bath’s hot tap or being arrested for vagrancy on my way back from a climb. He always gets cut off. If I’m feeling up to it, I’ll listen the way you listen to a sweet, familiar tune.
I think that was the real reason why, after Chick’s death, Rex never completed anything. There was only one story he really had to tell and from deep habit he had repressed it, choosing suicide rather than write it. “The Story of Rex and Chick.” Even under such dreadful stress he couldn’t let it come out. He had destroyed Chick’s journals to ensure it never would be known. And then he had destroyed himself.
Rather than dwell on that I’ll listen to his familiar fantasies once again. Then I’ll turn off the machine, curse the bastard for a liar and a coward and a calculating fucking sadist, pick up one of his books and head for bed, glad enough, I guess, that I still have a few stories of my own to tell and some rotten bloody friends to remember.